Flock Together

Paying tribute to Jean Schlumberger and Bunny Mellon, Tiffany & Co. updates its iconic Bird on a Rock

- sam cocHRAN

Nature, in all its exuberant irregularity, was a common passion for Jean Schlumberger and Rachel Lambert Mellon—he the legendary longtime Tiffany & Co. designer, she the philanthropic green thumb better known as Bunny. Little surprise then that these two self-taught tastemakers hit it off, developing an intimate friendship and exchanging many letters over the years as Mellon collected his dazzling zoomorphic and botanical creations. In 1965 she purchased one of the jeweler’s earliest Bird on a Rock brooches: an emerald-eyed fledgling of canary and white diamonds, perched on a cabochon lapis lazuli. Legend has it that he took inspiration from a charismatic cockatoo encountered on his travels, perhaps to Asia, perhaps to his own Guadeloupe retreat. In the years since it first took flight, the mo